Vanished

by Kat Richardson

  Glick took a step away from her, glancing at Simeon and picking a route far from either of them. “You lied to us,” he said, amazed. “A thing like you? Deceived me? Deceived the Brotherhood?”

  Alice’s expression turned to a slow sneer of disgust. “Weak, useless fool.” She flicked her scarlet-tipped claw at him. “Kreanou. Relieve me of this . . . thing.”

  A low hiss rose on my other side. I whipped my head to look at the silver-eyed monster beside me, but it was already moving. I shifted my glance toward Glick, Alice, and Simeon.

  A look of terror flashed across Glick’s face. All eyes watched as he spun around and bolted with the unnatural speed and strength of his kind, streaking for the nearest open doorway. A black wind raced after him, edged in brick red, and blocked the door, congealing into the shape of the silver-eyed vampire—or whatever it was—with saber fangs curving from its impossibly gaping mouth. Simeon and Alice turned as one and walked a few steps toward them, Alice laughing with maniacal glee.

  I heard a noise from Purcell and I dashed to him, hoping to get him out of the inevitable line of fire.

  “No,” he gasped.

  The room shivered in the Grey, flashing silver and red by turns. Something shrieked and Purcell collapsed to his knees as if he’d been scythed down. I closed the distance, but a rushing cold sprang up from the floor and gripped me like an icy fist. I was trapped as surely as if I’d been caged in steel bars.

  “I tried to warn you,” Purcell whispered near my feet. “You stepped on the switch. Now you’re stuck in one of these damnable spell cages, like me! Another of Simeon’s horrid inventions. Don’t try anything magical or they freeze you like a fly in amber.”

  “What about you?”

  “It just crushes me if I move. I shouldn’t have flinched. But poor Henry . . .”

  Glick screamed, and under the sound of Alice’s laughter, I could hear something tearing wetly apart. Glick’s screams stopped abruptly and the smell of blood thickened the air. Purcell whimpered as the spell squeezed down on him.

  “Why, John,” Alice said, returning to our side of the dais, “you’ve got our guest stuck.” Her smile was sickening.

  She turned and swept the room with her glittering stare. “There will be no more resistance from any of you! The kreanou has no mercy. He listens only to me and he only wishes to destroy.” She pointed back toward the arch where Glick had met his quick and gruesome end. “That is what happens to fools who try to cross me.”

  My Greyness made movement into torture, and every degree of rotation ripped into me as if I were bound in barbed wire. Turning back to face Alice felt like I was being flayed alive, but I managed it.

  Alice was watching me. “How nice of you to truss yourself up. Now all I have to do is deliver you and it’s all mine.” Then she added, her voice not much louder than a whisper, but piercing and clear as shattering crystal, “You should know. You should want to know, what it is you’re going to do.”

  “I’m not going to do anything for you or the Pharaohn.” That didn’t sound as commanding as I’d hoped; more a pathetic whimper.

  She just smiled back and purred words as sickening as venom. “It’s going to be lovely. He’s been trying for so long and now he finally has you here, alone, and Edward where he can’t run. It’s all been so very perfect. He said you’re a gate.” She tilted her head back and forth as she gave her tiny, evil smile, and I thought of my father’s puzzle, tucked into my pocket. It was a key. . . . “I don’t see it. A gate. Well”—she twitched her eyebrows, dismissing the incongruity—“I suppose you will be when we’re done. I am disappointed, however. I hoped you’d make more trouble. He says you have to die just a bit more. I wouldn’t mind if it were a lot more, but . . . well. He wouldn’t like it. And I have my demesne to look after now.”

  She turned and beckoned. The kreanou, glowering, blood splashed, and ravenous, prowled over to her. “The House of Detention,” she said, her voice taking on the strange blue shiver of command. I could see the strand connecting her to the kreanou shimmer with it. “We’ll see what the butcher makes of her. And if not him, your turn.” Alice glanced at me again. “It would be a pity if the kreanou gives in to his nature. Dez!”

  I didn’t have time to wonder about the kreanou’s nature and the connection between the creature, Alice, and her sorcerer. I was pretty sure someone was going to kill me—or do their best impression—in a few minutes, and I wasn’t quite sure I believed that Greywalkers always bounced back. It hadn’t worked that way for Dad. I preferred not to test Marsden’s theories if possible, and I just plain didn’t want to die!

  The wavering demi-vamp dragged his steps to the dais. It was obvious he didn’t like what had happened to Glick, but he didn’t have a lot of options other than following the orders of his new Primate or being the next stress test for the kreanou.

  “Take them to the House of Detention. You can dispose of Purcell there and leave her for the ghost. It’s really very poetic, don’t you think? Letting the ghost have a chance at killing the ghost killer?” She looked me in the eye with a red gleam of hate. “It wouldn’t work if you weren’t what you are. And don’t worry: I’ll take such good care of your dear William.”

  FORTY

  She couldn’t kill me, so she’d do something worse to Will. I Sprayed that Michael and Marsden had found an opportunity to grab Will without waiting for me.

  As Purcell and I were prodded out of the room by Dez with the glowering kreanou in his wake, I tried to think of a new way to thwart Wygan’s plans. I didn’t have my dad’s option—and I wouldn’t have taken it if I had. I’d come close when I’d been new to Greywalking but I didn’t think giving up was a good idea anymore. Marsden had seemed to think just getting me out of the way would stymie whatever Wygan was up to, which meant there wasn’t a new Greywalker around with similar talents. But that wouldn’t stop Wygan from trying to make another like he’d pushed to make my father and then me into the shape he wanted. If it came to a fight, I might not survive.

  I wasn’t sure, specifically, what the kreanou was, but the term “killing machine” fit it in general pretty well. I didn’t want to tangle with it if I hoped to live and save Will.

  I kept Will in the front of my mind, even through the torturing jolts the cage stabbed into me with every step, even when my thoughts tried to wander to Quinton and whatever terrors were building back home, even when I wondered about the strange little puzzle in my pocket and what a gate might do with its own key. I focused on the one immediate thing: I had to get Will out.

  We passed through the magical barrier around the room in a haze of pain. Once outside of the ceremonial chamber, the cages dropped off and Purcell and I could move easier, but we were both drained from the agony of the short walk. It was wretched going with Dez and the kreanou prodding us along through the buried catacombs.

  “What’s this place?” I muttered to Purcell.

  “We’re in the bones of the city. The catacombs and old tunnels. Down where the rivers used to flow until they covered ’em over and made ’em into sewers. You can hear the Fleet muttering its old songs if you listen,” he murmured back, misunderstanding what I’d meant to ask.

  “No, I mean what’s this House of Detention?”

  “Used to be the holding jail—where they kept prisoners until they could send ’em to another place. Or hang ’em. Miserable, it was. It’s a ruin now. Breeds ghosts like a battlefield. Most of ’em nasty.”

  I tried to see into the darkness that descended as we went farther into the tunnels, but the ghost light was uneven and I kept catching glimmers of white and reflections of forgotten illumination that caught in my eye like dust. Things moved in the distance and sounds echoed and rattled strangely.

  The last of the candlelight from the chamber beneath the priory had long faded, when I saw something flicker down a connecting tunnel like a distant mirror in the sun.

  Then came a silver-white flash behind us that went up to the ceiling w
ith a concussion that threw us forward. The roar and scream of the explosion came right behind it and my ears rang, but I could still hear a mad cackle in my head. Marsden’s cackle.

  Fast footsteps pattered like a distant storm on my right and a clammy hand grasped my upper arm, wrenching me upright. I jerked my head to look at the hand’s owner.

  Michael Novak yanked me toward the nearest black branch of the tunnel. “Come on!” he rasped in a low, panicky voice.

  Screaming and rending sounds came from behind and the iron smell of blood mixed with the nauseating corruption of vampire curdled the air.

  I didn’t look back. Whatever Marsden was doing, I didn’t want to waste the time he was buying us by watching it. I started to go with Michael, but Purcell threw himself between us onto my other arm. He stared into my eyes and clapped his hands around mine, pressing something rigid and toothed into my palms. “Edward’s vault. Tell him I am sorry.”

  The kreanou shrieked its victory as Dez’s screams cut off short. Purcell shoved me after Michael before turning to run toward the carnage.

  The younger Novak hauled me along, twisting my arm near to dislocation in his rush. “Run, run, run,” he chanted.

  I gathered my wits, closed my fist around the hard, biting thing Purcell had entrusted to me, and sprinted with Michael through the opening and into the darkness of a passageway that plunged downward into the earth and the smell of sewers. I could hear scuffling and growls behind us but not a single cry. I hoped Purcell was made of tougher stuff than Dez and Glick had been. Never thought I’d root for the vampire . . . I hoped all this wasn’t in vain.

  “Will?” I asked as we ran.

  “Couldn’t get to him,” Michael replied, gasping the words. “Got worried . . . waiting for you . . .”

  “You know . . . where?”

  He grunted, “Uh-huh.” Then he shut up and we charged on.

  I was lost, not knowing what direction we were going or where we were in the twisting tunnels and dry, ancient sewers below Clerkenwell. I just tore along in Michael’s wake. We flashed past a silvery line on the floor and I heard a crack of thunder as another blur of white light shot up behind us, leaving a barrier of sparking magic and acrid smoke. The shape of the spell reminded me of the tangles and traps Mara had made for me once—little bits of hedge magic woven into rings of thorns and grass. It wasn’t the same but it was similar, and I assumed it was something Marsden had done to cover our escape. I didn’t really care so long as the kreanou didn’t follow us.

  Michael jagged to the right and into another tunnel. A pale smear detached from the wall and hurried beside us.

  “That should send ’im whimperin’ back to his mother,” Marsden crowed as he fell in with us. “Round the left—we’ll be able to hop over there.”

  “Over . . . what?” I panted, adrenaline shortening my breath and making me stagger.

  “Time. To the House of Detention when it was still standin’. There’s a way out back then.”

  “No!” I objected. “That’s . . . where—”

  “I heard the plan,” he snapped. “But we shan’t be going through the bit that bloodsucking bitch had in mind, and they can’t follow us my way. The only other way out from this end takes us through St. James’s. You don’t want that!”

  “No,” I agreed.

  “Then bleedin’ trust me!”

  Around the next bend in the passage we came to the fragment of an ancient wall and threw ourselves over it. Marsden scrambled up first, clutched at the thickly silvered air, and wrenched. . . .

  The world jerked sideways.

  We rolled to the ground and up against the wall at a new angle. Or possibly a different wall.

  Marsden picked himself up and brushed dirt from his trousers and coat. He turned back to us, whispering, “Been a prison for three hundred years. Lots of bad things floatin’ about.” Then he put his finger over his lips. We followed him in silence.

  FORTY-ONE

  I wasn’t sure how or where we entered the prison itself. The walls just gave way to rooms and proper corridors crossed at strange intervals by low tunnels for ventilation or sewage. The cells at our end were the dankest and foulest confinement I’d ever seen outside the “hole” at Alcatraz. Most of them were empty in the time we’d tumbled into, but even in the past, the place boiled with ghosts and the gelid air stank of waste and water and human despair. The song of London’s Grey had become a dirge.

  We scrambled through the labyrinth of the prison’s lowest pit, where real, solid brick vaults and ghostly doubles stood in the earth to hold up a structure soaked in the uncanny and the horrifying. Low brickwork doorways led to low-ceilinged cell blocks of whitewashed brick. Marsden motioned us forward at every turning with frantic gestures and the cocking of his head this way and that, listening.

  Explosions and screams rocked the building, and we found ourselves rushing through panicking crowds of prisoners. The impression was so thick and strong, even Michael responded to their press and their terror. The memory of fire broke out behind us.

  “It’s burning!” Michael yelped, his own exhaustion and fear pulling him into the verges of hysteria where the Grey flickers into the visible like campfire smoke images.

  Marsden turned back to him with a furious expression. “Hush!”

  The warning came too late; something had heard and filtered itself from the murk of history and the memory of smoke, flowing fast across the teeming vault of the cell block toward us as it solidified into the shape of a gaunt man. The stink intensified as he came closer—not just the stench of the prison but of corruption and bodily rot—homing in on us like a hunting hound.

  “Bloody hell,” Marsden breathed. “It’s the wraith. Bloody butcher Norrin. We’re in it now.”

  The wraith cut through the crowd of ghosts like a sword. It wasn’t quite like them but something more eternal and horrible with a greater solidity in its accumulated bulk of evil. So this was what Alice had been sending me to: a spirit old, solid, and wicked enough to do someone like me serious hurt. Anyone with a hint of sensitivity would feel it, whether they were touched with the Grey or not. Someone descending into it by close association with the likes of Marsden and me couldn’t help but know it was there. Michael retched in the swirling darkness beside me and stumbled back. I put myself between him and the barely corporate monster that approached.

  But it wasn’t interested in me. It fixed its attention on the other Greywalker, blocking our path—unless we wanted to go through it and I certainly didn’t.

  “Peter, Peter,” the wraith sang in a voice that chilled my spine. “I knew ye’d come back, y’lyin’ pig swiver. Ah, but what happened to yer pretty blue eyes, eh? I told ye I’d pluck ’em out for ye if y’didn’t care for the sight o’ me. But y’did for yerself, didn’t ye? I should punish ye for that. But ye’ve brought me some other pretties, too? Ah. That’ll keep yer lying throat uncut a while longer.”

  The wraith turned burning eyes on Michael and me, picking us from the crowd of alarmed ghosts who ran from the memory of flames. An unearthly gleam danced along the fine edge of a blade in his hand. His thumb brushed lightly across the tang, and the reflection of light turned scarlet as his face stretched into something lupine and horrible.

  “Keep yer distance, Norrin,” Marsden spat back at him. His lank white hair swung over his face as he turned, making shadows dance in his ravaged eye sockets. “They’re not for the likes of you.”

  “No? But y’know I like a bit of fun whether ye will or no, Peter.”

  The knife flashed as Norrin lashed out sideways, never shifting his gaze. I dodged back, shoving Michael away. The boy grunted and stumbled sideways, coming clear of my body. Norrin sprang at him, mouth gaping into a black chasm lined with rows of ripsaw teeth.

  Michael rolled.

  The blade glinted red and rang a quivering crystal note on the fire-lit mist of the Grey for a moment, slicing through the fabric of magic like a razor as the unearthly Norrin snappe
d and howled.

  The keen edge nicked through Michael’s sleeve near the shoulder. Michael gasped and clapped his other hand over the shoulder. His eyes were wide with shock.

  Marsden and I both jumped for the wraith as the phantoms of panicked prisoners rushed through us with the feel of an ice storm. Norrin twisted in our grasp, slippery and lithe as an oiled snake. Looking deeper into the Grey, I saw him as a hollow frame of bright energy lines without the usual tangled core of a soul. He was difficult to hook my fingers into as his apparent surface sparked and fizzed like an overloaded electrical circuit.

  I glanced at Marsden as we struggled to hold the thing, but he didn’t seem to have any better grip on it than I did. Norrin swore and stabbed at us with his knife, his face oozing into the shapes of eldritch beasts and monsters.

  The eerie blade bit in like the real thing. I could feel blood running down my chest where the eldritch knife had sliced me. It really was a ghost that could kill me! Or at least enough to make whatever tweaking and shaping Wygan had in mind possible. That chilled me, but I dug in and tried to get my fingers into the weave of the wraith’s energy shape, which resisted like callused flesh.

  Marsden wrapped his arms around the writhing form and squeezed. The ghost shape compressed a little and Norrin shouted, “I’ll have yer liver, y’bastard!” as he fought to escape.

  “We can’t break it. You’ll have to run. Go on!” Marsden urged me. “Get to the door and get out. Take the boy!”

  I let go of Norrin and turned back to haul Michael to his feet. He came along, dazed and stumble-footed as I dashed for the nearest door that looked to lead out. But the door was locked and the terrified prisoners who had escaped their cells—or never been confined at all—swarmed around it, clawing at it frantically. The heavy iron-bound portal wouldn’t yield to me, either.

  I looked back over my shoulder toward Marsden.

  The other Greywalker doubled over and twitched as Norrin drove a blow into his gut.